On July 9, 2012, Jennifer Bendery writes on The Huffington Post Web site:
President Barack Obama on Monday gave another push to Congress to let families keep their Bush-era tax cuts on their first $250,000 of taxable income, an idea that top Republicans immediately shot down.
“Pass a bill extending the tax cuts for the middle class, I will sign it tomorrow,” Obama said during remarks at the White House. “Pass it next week, I’ll sign it next week.”
Flanked by about a dozen Americans who would benefit from the middle-class tax cut extension, Obama said tax cuts that people are currently receiving on income above the $250,000 threshold are “a major contributor to our deficit” that will cost $1 trillion over the next decade. They are also the least likely to create economic growth, he said.
“We can’t afford to keep that up, not right now,” Obama said. “I just believe that anybody making over $250,000 should go back to the income tax rates we were paying under Bill Clinton.”
All of the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year in the absence of congressional action.
We will not solve our severe predicament by taxing our way out of the concentrated ownership of wealth that our system has perpetrated and redistributing those earnings through government expenditures. This is not to say that EVERY citizen should pay their fair share of the tax burden.
We will not solve our severe predicament by taxing our way out of the concentrated ownership of wealth that our system has perpetrated and redistributing those earnings through government expenditures. This is not to say that EVERY citizen should not pay their fair share of the tax burden.
If we continue with the past’s unworkable trickle-down economic policies, the government will have to continue to use the coercive power of taxation to redistribute income that is made by people who earn it and give it to those who need it. This results in ever deepening massive debt on local, state, and national government levels, which leads to the citizenry becoming parasites instead of enabling people to become productive in the way that products and services are actually produced.
There are actionable policies that will dramatically impact the market economy and strengthen the middle class in a positive and sustainable way, while expanding the base of private capital ownership and thus strengthening the way consumers make the money to purchase the products and services made possible by the new capital formation. The result will be to expand production and bring more wealth to the economy, which will provide not only growth in expanded ownership of productive capital but also in expanded employment opportunities as the economy revs up to meet expanded consumer demand. Furthermore, the more broadly real capital is acquired by individuals throughout our society with the earnings of capital, the more we will profitably employ unused capacity and promote economic growth. With greater earnings from capital worker investment, people will be able to support and pay for products resulting from “greener” technologies that today people cannot afford. Such policies are perfectly in tune with the natural incentive of business corporations to broaden ownership so that the market for their products will increase. Such policies will liberate the economy.
